


18 Hours

by Villainyandgoodcheekbones



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Villainyandgoodcheekbones/pseuds/Villainyandgoodcheekbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the longest neural handshake on record.</p><p>18 hours in another person's head, and it's hard to tell who's who anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	18 Hours

hey have been each other, Drifting, for five hours now, and the woman beside Aleksis Nikolaivitch Kaidanovsky is a wolf, an eagle, a knife, a gun, her lipstick still perfect even as her hair escapes in sweat-soaked threads around her face. These are the fights that last too long, Kaiju too fast, and too smart to simply hammer into the dirt. These take skill, yes, and cunning, of course, but more than anything, they take salt. Salt, to pool across his chest and beneath his arms under the suit, to soak her hair, and fill their mouths when the Kaiju bats them aside like a cat with a bird and they bite down on their tongues until they bleed and drag  _Cherniy_  back up.

It is his second year on the Wall, his second year with the woman beside him, who is a deer, running faster anyone could ever imagine, a tiger, running faster than that, mercury and the scent of bleach and rust, and they are still together. Nobody thought they would be. Nobody thought they would be like this at all, the others are all brothers, sisters, they’re all blood. Nobody thought she would make it any further, not after her brother died, aneurysm during a simulation (He’s seen them, dragging Kolya, little Kolya, with his bright blonde hair, dandelion wild, dragging him away with blood in his eyes and nose, felt his own throat raw from swallowing the scream). Nobody thought that he would be drift compatible at all, too big and too young and too quiet, an only child. They figured him for an engineer, if anything.

But they  _are_  blood, he and Aleksandra Grigoryevna Asterinova. They have spilled enough, bled enough for that. And he is about to tell the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps that they cannot fight another Kaiju, not today, let someone else deal with whatever just crawled out of the waves 50 miles down the Siberian Wall, they can’t do it, but the woman beside him is saying “We can take them. We can take them, Lyosha. Lyoshka, please.”

And they are blood, so he knows, this is the day it happened, and she will not lose anyone else, not ever, but especially not today. So he tells them that  _Cherniy_  is coming.

They walk. Then run.

Eight hours.

_–sunflowers, looking at the pictures of the sunflowers, and her yellow scarf flying as she runs through the snow, she is twelve, at the river, almost drowns, twentty two, watching the Kaiju tear a bridge like paper, twenty three and Kolya is so pale, his hair, duckling hair, like bright yellow down as they wheel him away_

_–watching, he is watching Uncle Konstantin with his lions, their mouths strawberry red and their breath hot on his hands, alone, he is sixteen and joining the army, grease on his hands keeping them from freezing while he pulls apart the guts of stalled truck, but it’s not quite enough, almost loses three fingers, he is sixteen still, months later, watching the pursed lips of a Serb with cracked glasses as he finally signs off on his applications_

_–he breaks her staff in two, battering her back and back_

_-she lashes out, one-two with a broken length in each hand, kicks his legs out_

_-grabs her ankle, and it’s been two hours they’ve been doing this and then–_

Then they are reeling, salt in their eyes and blood in their ears from a Kaiju’s scream. It has claws, this one, claws like jagged boulders and its hide is craggy with spikes and spurs. And the woman beside him, Aleksandra,  _Sasha_  bares her teeth and he bares in his own in kind, because they are two- _one_  of a kind. It’s been ten hours now, it’s hard to tell who’s who.

Six hours back to the rendezvous point, because they’re hurt, moving slow, and Aleksis won’t stop turning aside for one last sweep, because this the day that Kolya died, and he will not let anyone else die today.

Two hours to Hong Kong, and when they pull them both out, asking brusquely for names, condition, any medical allergies, she says “Aleksis, Aleksis Kadianovsky” while he gasps “Sasha, my name is Sasha, Sahsa Asterinova”.

The records stay that way for years.

He wakes first, on a bed in a hospital in Hong Kong, and the woman beside him does not look at all younger in her sleep. She looks only like herself, but Aleksis finds himself irritated on her behalf that they’ve wiped all her lipstick away. It wasn’t easy to get.

He will find more, he resolves, swinging his legs off the bed, and have it ready when she wakes up, but the woman beside him is already waking up, and smiling, then swearing, and Aleksis Nikolaivitch Kadianovsky is in love.

**Author's Note:**

> A vague attempt at grappling with the who's-sasha-and-who's-aleksis dilemma. Find me on tumblr at sasha--kaidanovsky.tumblr.com; feel free to leave prompt, a comment, or just say hi


End file.
